


The Dadvergence

by imma_redshirt



Category: Dungeons and Daddies (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Middle School, Attempted Kidnapping, Child Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Recreational Drug Use, bad dads are bad, willy stampler is willy stampler
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26247553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imma_redshirt/pseuds/imma_redshirt
Summary: In one timeline, Willy Stampler's plans fail and he loses everything in the Forgotten Realms.So he influences another timeline, setting events in motion long before they happen in his reality, causing three kids from San Dimas and one kid from Oakvale to work together 20-some years too early.... which just means they beat him a lot earlier, if I'm going to be honest.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34





	The Dadvergence

**Author's Note:**

> A few things before we get started:  
> 1\. Ironwood Lake is entirely fictional.  
> 2\. I dunno what the Dads’ ages are canonically, so to make things easier on myself because I’m a fanfiction writer and I do what I want, they’re all in 7th grade in 1995 (except for Henry who’s still in the Forgotten Realms at this point but is still around the same age as the others.)  
> 3\. This is mostly experimental writing cause I wanted to play around with time travel and alternate timelines and my own writing style. Things are probably about to get kind of confusing because I don’t have the patience to really research the technicalities of diverging timelines and junk.  
> 4\. _At the Mountains of Dadness_ is referenced, and references will be explained later.  
> 5\. Please, please heed the warnings. It’s not all doom and gloom and the rest of the chapters won’t have the same uber serious tone as the first one, but Willy is definitely a jackass through the entire thing.  
> 6\. The title is my sister's fault. I blame her entirely.

In 1995, on a cool September evening, Willy Stampler took his son fishing.

Now, it’s still very early on in the story, but this is actually where things start to get a little bit complicated. As hard sci-fi fan and 13-year-old Carol Carlson will tell you, alternate universes tend to complicate things a _lot,_ especially when someone from one universe tries to influence the events in another. 

There are entire Star Trek story arcs dedicated to the changes a single event can cause in the space time continuum, and Carol will gladly tell you about how a divergence in a timeline can change something from as simple as a person’s appearance to the moral alignment of an entire space exploration organization. (Don’t even get her started on the multiple timelines present in _Back to the Future_ and how each of those timelines can diverge even _further_.)

Years from the starting point in our story, Carol herself will become a victim of the chaos caused by alternate timelines and time travel shenanigans. For now, though, she is a relatively carefree eighth grader in San Dimas, California, watching Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns instead of working on her history class project, blissfully unaware of the troubles the future holds for her and the ones she loves. 

Sitting at the end of his father’s utility boat, 12-year-old Ron Stampler was also blissfully unaware of what the future held for him and his family. Ron was actually blissfully unaware of more than a few things at the moment, because he was very focused on _two_ specific things. One: the pretty colors of the sun setting out across the lake, and two: his father, Willy Stampler, who sat across from him at the opposite end of the boat. 

It was pretty easy to focus on both things at once. Ron could see the colors on the water behind Dad’s shoulders, so he didn’t have to look away from Dad at all. Unless Dad told him to grab something from the tackle box, which meant Ron would have to look away from both the water and Dad to look at the tackle box to get whatever he was told to get. He’d tried to get stuff out of the tackle box without looking at it once before, but he’d ended up poking his finger on a hook and Dad had been pretty annoyed at having to pause fishing to put a bandaid on him. 

… Well, Dad had paused just to point out where the bandaids were so Ron could put one on himself, but he was still pretty annoyed. 

Granted, Ron hadn’t really been told to do anything since two fishing trips ago when he’d thrown up after trying to gut a fish. Dad had been pretty angry and had sent Ron away to clean himself up in the bathroom. Later that day when Dad fried up the fish with burnt fries on the side, Ron hadn’t been offered any. He hadn’t worked for it, Dad had said, so he couldn’t enjoy the rewards.

Actually, today Dad _had_ told him to “sit down and shut up” when they’d gotten in the boat, and Ron had been doing a pretty great job at both of those things so far. He hadn’t even made a peep when Dad had turned the motor on and made the boat shoot off into the water, the force of the propulsion almost knocking Ron backwards, which was great! Ron was happy. He hadn’t gotten in Dad’s way a single time so far since they’d launched the boat from the pier, and Dad was mad at other stuff instead of him. That was good!

Ron smiled to himself as he watched the colors on the water behind Dad’s scowling face. The colors were so pretty--yellow and orange and yellow-orange rippling as the sun sank into the calm waters of Ironwood Lake. There were no other boats on the water to disturb the sparkling colors, and there hadn’t been for some time. Dad had steered their little boat far into the lake to their usual spot, past Old Oak Point where an abandoned cabin sat in the shade of ancient trees and overgrown weeds. Ron liked to watch the cabin whenever they floated by. He imagined himself finding all the best hiding spots behind those broken windows.

He didn’t know if he’d ever get the chance to explore that old building though, so for now he just enjoyed watching the waves of orange light moving serenely by the boat.

Speaking of orange, Ron wondered if Mom would peel an orange for him when they got back from the fishing trip. She usually did as long as Dad wasn’t looking, because if Dad was looking, then he made Ron do it himself--but Ron didn’t like peeling oranges because he always made a big mess, which annoyed Dad even if Ron was trying his hardest _not_ to make a mess. But if Dad _wasn’t_ looking, then Mom would do it all neat for Ron and would smile with him as he popped the orange wedges into his mouth. 

He really hoped Mom was home from work because he was really craving oranges now, and as he tried to remember how long ago Mom had _left_ for work, something strange happened--the boat jumped.

It was only a small jump, with Dad’s corner of the boat just clearing the lake’s surface and sending water splashing when it landed, but it still startled Ron enough for a yelp to escape despite this resolution to be as quiet as possible. His hands shot out to either side to grab the edges of the boat as it rocked side to side. Dad, who had just cast his shiny new skirted jig into the water, cursed and did the same, scowling at the splashing water as if his glare alone would make it settle down and be calm again. And, somehow, it seemed to work. After a few moments, the boat steadied and the water stopped splashing. Silence once again fell over the lake. 

As soon as he had heard himself yelp, Ron had thrown a hand over his mouth and looked at Dad with big eyes. But Dad didn’t snap at him to be quiet or to stop being a baby. Dad didn’t even _look_ at him. Instead, Dad was still scowling at the water, hands gripping his fishing rod with white knuckles.

“What the _fuck,_ ” Dad said, and it is at this point where things really get complicated.

Because as the Stampler boat steadied on the calming waters, the current timeline split neatly in two.

Calling this a neat split might actually be a bit misleading. Nothing is neat or simple when it comes to alternate timelines, or alternate universes, or alternate realities, or whatever terminology you decide to use. The point is, it’s not clean or straightforward. It’s actually kind of a big mess of time streams that connect and splinter and wind about, like a collection of Black Widow webs stuffed into a giant barrel. The original timeline is lost somewhere at the bottom, obscured by fresh strings of time that flow on endlessly, continuously splitting and spinning and crisscrossing and, sometimes, collapsing on each other. 

But for simplicity’s sake, and for the sake of the author’s sanity, we’re going to focus on the two timelines that are born from this single event. 

So, reality splintered, and time streamed in two directions.

In one timeline, Willy Stampler was pulled into the lake by something massive and writhing. Ron would always remember it as a giant fish, even though he never saw the fish itself. He would only ever say that a big fish dragged his father under water, probably because the fancy new lure his father had used had been too irresistible to ignore. In that timeline, Willy never climbed back into the boat or swam to shore. His body was never again found on Earth. 12-year-old Ron would wait alone in the boat, curled in on himself against the chill autumn wind as evening fell into night, until a nice family found him early the next morning.

Unfortunately, in that timeline, Ron would meet his father again in the Forgotten Realms. Ron would also be lost in that strange world, just trying to find his step-son with three other dads while suffering from an unfortunate absence of pants.

But though that timeline is very important, it’s not the one we’re going to follow (the fact that the telling of that timeline isn’t nearly finished might have something to do with it, sure. And the author isn’t complaining, she would actually love for it to go on for a good while so she can have something fun to listen to at work.)

In the second timeline, the one we’re observing for the foreseeable future, events initially played out nearly the same way.

Willy Stampler was dragged under the water.

Ron didn’t see it happen. Not really. When Dad didn’t punish him for yelping and potentially scaring away the fish, Ron peered over the other side of the boat at the water to maybe see whatever had knocked into them. He knew that logs and boulders jutted out of the bottom of the lake. If people weren’t careful, they sometimes steered their boats into shallow water and bumped into those logs and boulders. Maybe Dad had accidentally done that. 

Except this was Dad’s favorite fishing spot. They had fished here countless times in the past, and Dad had never run afoul of anything in the water. The water was also very deep here, so unless a very, very long log was sticking straight up from the lake floor, the boat couldn’t have run into anything.

Frowning at the water, Ron rubbed his chin like he’d seen so many leading actors in action movies do when they were deep in thought. He could see his reflection and the shimmering colors of the sunset, but nothing else. Maybe, he thought, a rogue wave had just… done whatever rogue waves did and made the boat jump. Maybe. Possibly. Probably. Probability? Was that the right word? They were learning about probabilities in Algebra I, and it kind of sounded like the word “probably,” so maybe--

Ron’s train of thought was interrupted by a very loud, very disruptive _splash._

The boat rocked. Ron gripped the edge of the boat to steady himself before looking up from the water, which had begun to rise and fall in little waves. He saw the shore ahead, and the Old Oak Point cabin, and the sun that had sunk half way into the horizon. He saw the open tackle box in the middle of the boat and the cooler that held Dad’s beer and whatever fish they caught, and Dad’s Budwieser can on the floor of the boat.

But he didn’t see Dad.

Ron sat frozen, still gripping the boat, and stared at the spot where Dad had just been sitting seconds ago. He scrambled to look over the edge to see if Dad was in the water, but there was only water.

“Dad?” He called, completely forgetting his resolve to be quiet again. Silence met him. He called again, louder and panicky, “ _Dad?_ Um, s-sir?”

He got no answer.

He called again and again, but still Dad didn't answer or appear from the depths of the lake. The boat was beginning to steady again, but Ron felt like the world was spinning. There had been a splash, and now Dad was gone. Even his fishing rod was missing. Ron was alone on a boat near a creepy old cabin and the sun was going down and Dad was _gone._

 _Oh no no no,_ he thought. If he had only kept his attention on Dad like he was supposed to, maybe he would have stopped--what? What would he have stopped? He wasn’t even sure what had happened. All he knew was that Dad had cast his fancy new lure out into the water some time ago, then the boat had jumped, and now Dad was gone.

_Time for some deductive reasoning,_ he thought. This calmed him down a bit, because he usually saved deductive reasoning for English class when Ms. Alcott said to look for context clues in a story. 

He sat back in the boat and clasped his shaking hands in his lap. He glanced at the water, then at the empty spot in the boat across from him. He glanced at the water again. Fish lived in the lake. They had come here to catch fish. Sometimes the fish were very big. While they were fishing, something had hit the boat. If they were in deep water where logs and rocks at the bottom of the lake couldn’t reach them, maybe a fish did, because fish could swim near the surface. A very big fish could rock a boat, maybe, possibly, probably? And if a fish was big enough to make the boat move, then it might be big enough to pull a man into the water. Especially if the man was trying to catch it with a fancy skirted jig, which any stupid fish would definitely take a bite at. 

So, conclusion number one: Dad had been pulled into the water by a fish. And Dad loved his fishing rod and brand new lure, so he was probably at the bottom of the lake fighting the fish for the lure.

That, or Dad was playing a trick on Ron.

Ron bit his lip, cleared his throat, and said, “Um, haha! Dad, you’re so--you’re so funny, this is such a funny trick, good job sir, I um, I can’t wait to tell Mom….”

His voice died in his throat, because if Dad was playing a joke, he would have showed up by now, right? Not even Dad could hold his breath that long, no matter how much he liked scaring Ron with pranks and stuff.

So, if he wasn’t playing a trick, that meant…

Dad had been dragged into the water by a stupid fish. Or maybe he had just fallen in. Or gone for a swim. With his fishing reel because maybe fishing reels were good for swimming. And maybe he left Ron there to watch the boat so no one would steal anything.

Ron clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. He scooted off his seat and sat criss-cross-applesauce on the floor of the boat, then wrapped his arms around himself. It was getting cold, but Ron was also getting nervous. He didn’t want to be alone here. He wanted to go home where it was dry and warm. He wanted to cuddle with Mom, as long as Dad didn’t see, which he probably wouldn’t because he was _gone_ \--

The silence of the lake was once again disturbed by the sloshing of water and a hand shooting up from the surface to grip the edge of the boat. 

Ron _screamed._

He fell back against the seat well cover behind him and stared as something dragged itself over the edge and into the boat. It fell with a heavy, wet _thud_ , and lay limp as the boat rocked side to side. Ron stopped screaming but was frozen with his arms over his head, as if he could protect himself from whatever was now laying across from him. The thing was hard to see in the waning sunlight, and it didn’t help that Ron almost immediately squeezed his eyes shut and curled in on himself.

There was a beat of silence before the thing began to cough and gasp, and beyond the darkness of his shut eyes, Ron could hear the thing moving about. The boat rocked _again_ as the thing shifted around, and Ron tried to stay as still as possible so maybe it wouldn’t see him--

“Sonofa _bitch._ ”

Ron’s breath caught in his throat. He opened his eyes. “Dad?”

Dad didn’t answer, but Ron knew it was him. The thing that had fallen into the boat was _definitely_ Dad. Ron would recognize that voice anywhere. Still, though, Ron remained where he was with his arms over his head as Dad slowly sat up, chest heaving as he gasped for air.

Ron had to squint to see Dad’s face. Not only were his features hard to see in the darkening twilight, but a dark ooze seemed to be stuck around his wide, red rimmed eyes. The ooze almost had a purple shimmer to it in what little light the setting sun allowed. Dad raised a shaking hand up to wipe it from his face, dragging his palm slowly down until it settled over his gaping mouth.

Ron stared. It wasn’t polite to stare, but he had never--not once--seen his father act like this. Dad was staring at the tackle box by his knees but he looked like he wasn’t seeing the tackle box at all. He didn’t blink, didn’t look away, didn’t move his hand from his mouth. Water dripped from his pale hair and his soaked clothes. Speckles of ooze made a trail from his eyes to his jaw and between his trembling fingers. He stared. And wheezed. And stared.

Without moving from his spot, Ron slowly lowered his arms to his sides. He was ready to cover his head again if he had to, but Dad didn’t even seem to notice that Ron was there.

Ron stammered, “Dad? Um, um, Dad, what ha--”

Dad raised a hand in the “shut up” gesture and wheezed, “Shut up, just shut up for once and let me think.”

“Yessir,” Ron blurted. He hunkered down and waited.

He didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t know what had happened to his father. He supposed maybe being dragged around by a big fish would leave anyone kind of shocked, but Dad looked… 

Ron didn’t know how to explain it. He just knew that deep down where fear usually took hold, he felt a sort of queasy unease that grew as seconds passed.

After a while, Dad turned to look at him. He was breathing easier now, and his hands weren’t trembling. He lowered his hand and stared at Ron and the unease turned into a sudden urge to _run._

With the ooze drying on his cheeks, Dad said, “We’re going home,” and turned the motor on.

Ron bowed his head against the wind and spray of water as they took off. For some time there was silence, and Ron wasn’t sure what to do. He wanted to ask what had happened, but he was pretty sure the “just shut up” order was still in effect, so he stayed quiet. 

Dad stared straight ahead and then said over the growl of the motor, “I saw something down there.”

“Like what?” Ron asked.

Dad glanced at him out of the corner of his eye and Ron shut his mouth. He waited again until Dad continued.

“I saw something amazing,” Dad said. Ron could barely hear him over the motor, but he sounded excited. “And I learned things. Amazing things! I can have everything I want and more! I just have to prevent a few mistakes. I will. I will.”

Ron wasn’t sure, but it sounded like Dad was really just talking to himself instead of to Ron. He didn’t say anything else until they came up to the pier. Dad’s truck was still parked on the shore, a dark hulking shape in the California night. The motor died down and Dad hitched the boat to the pier, but before climbing out, he looked at Ron.

“On the drive, I’m going to ask you questions, and you’re going to answer,” he said. “No side stories, no babbling, just answers. Do you understand?”

Ron nodded. He could do that. He was sure of it. 

Dad climbed out of the boat, and Ron followed clumsily. 

“Tell me about your friends,” Dad said. Ron’s heart jumped. He didn’t sound angry. He actually sounded interested. Interested in learning about Ron!

Which… wasn’t great for once, Ron thought with a sinking feeling. He didn’t have very many friends. But Dad didn’t have to know that.

“Um, okay,” Ron began. “Do you want to know about all of my friends? Because if you want to know about _all_ of them, then it might take the whole ride home cause the list is really, really long--”

That was a lie but all Ron really had to do was list off names of his fellow students. But Dad sighed and gritted his teeth and Ron zipped his lips. After a beat, Dad set a heavy hand on Ron’s shoulder and said in a controlled voice, “Forget what I said. I want you to tell me about just two--Darryl Wilson, and Glenn Close.”

Ron knew them but they weren’t his friends. They weren’t even friends with each other. He didn’t know how Dad knew their names, or why he wanted to know about them, but on the ride home Ron told him all that he could.

So focused they were on leaving the lake behind, neither of them noticed the faint violet glow emanating from the far off Old Oak Point, where an abandoned cabin lay in wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope it wasn't too confusing (but just confusing enough.)


End file.
